Seattle Now & Then: Westlake, ‘The Big Funnel’

THEN: A few of the landmarks revealed in this mid-twenties look north from the roof of the Medical Dental Building include Queen Anne High School, “Wilson’s Wood Row” of unused WW1 freighters camped in Lake Union, the Seattle Gas Company’s big holder at 9th and Republican, the Ford Assembly Plant and Denny Park. Can you find them? (Courtesy: MOHAI)NOW: The fenestration (window arrangement) of the glass curtain on the nearly new skyscraper at the northwest corner of Westlake and Virginia Street (to the left), is a fine expression of the growing revolt from the more minimal modern, like that used decades ago for the Plaza 600 Building at the center of this “repeat.” By comparison the new post modern – or post-post-modern – façade is psychedelic.

From his climb to the cornice of the eighteen-story Medical Dental Building, Jean Sherrard has thoughtfully returned with some frosting, one of the building’s crowning terra-cotta ornaments. Peeking at the bottom-right corner of Jean’s repeat, resembling a lampshade, it is one small part of the building’s elegant skin.

A 1925 clip from The Times

First imagined by its mix of professional (physicians and dentists) developers as a “real medical center in Seattle,” the polished and ornate Medical Dental Building was dedicated in 1925. With its ceramic tile cladding and more, the tower would be interpreted as an example of the late Gothic Revival, which, as it turned out, was a style about to lose its popularity.

In 1962, the Medical Dental Building rises behind the then new Monorail. The view looks north of 5th Ave. from mid-block between Virginia and Steward Streets. Photo by Frank Shaw

Looking north, from its tower, Westlake Avenue can be followed to Denny Way, where it elbows slightly to the northeast to complete its arterial duty to both Westlake and eventually Eastlake at the south shore of Lake Union. Westlake was sided by the triangular blocks and buildings fashioned in 1906-7 when it was cut through from Pike Street to Denny Way. Its landlords briefly named this new and direct approach to the north “The Big Funnel”.

North on Fifth Avenue from near Virginia Street and the front or south summit of Denny Hill, ca. 1886. The towered structured on the horizon is Central School (the largest in Washington Territory when it was built in 1884) facing Madison Street from its south side.

Jean’s thoughtful inclusion of the decorative ornament encourages us to extend our short review of the architectural history of this retail neighborhood at the north end of Seattle’s central business district. It began in earnest in the early 1880s with a few retailers scattered about the slopes of the by then clear-cut Denny Hill. The businesses were mixed with modest residences – some in rows – and tenements, all made from lumber milled on the shores of Elliott Bay and Lake Union. Aside from the built-for-show blocks around Pioneer Square and on Front Street (First Avenue N.) the fancier construction of this metropolis began only after its cinder-scrubbing by the Great Fire of 1889. Seattle began then to earnestly boom and build, often with bricks and the encouragement of better insurance rates for those who embraced both the new ordnances and bricks.

Capitol Hill from Denny Hill ca. 1893 about fourteen years before Westlake Avenue was cut through the grid here on its way from 4th and Pike to South Lake Union.

As for grace and style, terra-cotta tiles became nearly a necessity for any proud developer in the new twentieth century, until the expense of it became forbidding in the thirties with the Great Depression and/or too fussy for the more functional modernist tastes. One sizeable resister to modernity, “the Old Quarter,” appears here in the featured photo on left of Westlake and to this side of Denny Park’s greenbelt, also on the left. This is the last of the Denny Hill neighborhood. In 1911 it was left to molder when the Denny Hill Regrade reached Fifth Avenue and stopped. It remained dormant until 1929 when everything in this triangle was razed, including the low rents, just in time for the Great Depression.

A circa 1928 aerial of “old quarter – right-of-center – and the nearly new Medical Dental Building standing bright at the bottom-center with its own terra cotta tiled skin and Frederick and Nelson’s beside it to the south. Note the Civic Center’s construction scar upper right between Harrison and Mercer Streets and west of Fifth Avenue. (Courtesy, Ron Edge}

South on Fifth through Virginia Street. We don’t promise that the above now-and-then are perfect for repeating, but they are close.

Click to ENLARGE for Reading.The Medical Dental building endures on December 7, 1968 with protestors marching below it and the Monorail for citizens to “Remember the Pueblo.” Do you?

WEB EXTRAS

Anything to add, boyos? Sure Jean and by now we know the march. Ron Edge and I put up a sturdy parade of part features that relate to the week’s primary subject or concern or thereabouts. (Here I had hoped to include the original latin for “Repetition if the Mother of All Learning” but my computer has lost my “Google Translate” capacities. For the moment.)